Dezeenwire: the Shenzhen Stock Exchange building by OMA topped out today - see press release below.

OMA’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange Tops Out

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SSE) – designed by OMA as the new home for China’s equivalent of the NASDAQ exchange for hi-tech industries – topped out today at 246 metres. The building is remarkable not only for its height: with a raised podium suspended 36 metres over a public plaza and projecting 54 metres from the tower base, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange has one of the largest cantilevers in the world.

SSE officials, Shenzhen Mayor Xu Qin and Shenzhen Vice-mayors Lu Ruifeng and Chen Yingchun, joined Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas of OMA at a ceremony on 26th June at the construction site. Koolhaas commented: "We are extremely happy and honoured to have the opportunity to create here a building that can be both subtle and staggering at the same time."

Façade construction has already begun on the tower’s 46 floors, and the building is scheduled for completion in August 2011.

Adjacent to the city’s government offices and facing Shennan Road, Shenzhen's main artery, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange is planned as a financial centre with civic meaning. Raising the podium not only subverts the traditional architectural necessity of connecting a podium to the ground; it also creates a dramatic public plaza by liberating the ground around the tower. The three-story floating podium is built with 27,000 tons of steel and a single joint in the supporting truss work weighs as much as 172 tons.

OMA oversees the ambitious engineering and detailed design by working in an office with the client directly on the construction site – an unusual practice for foreign architects working in China. OMA’s site team is led by Michael Kokora, with general project management by David Gianotten.